Ed Suter on medical costs of gunshot injuries

Posted by David Hardy · 18 May 2005 01:28 PM

Some years ago the antis (led in part by the Joyce Fdn) created the approach of treating GSW as a medical issue, which had some PR benefits to their cause. Dr. Edgar Suter, chair of Doctors for Integrity in Public Research, has taken the lead in responding.

Here is Suter's response to an article along these lines, published in the Amer. J. of Preventative Medicine. Suter points out:

1. The article claims that millions are spent treating gunshot wounds ... but the sums mentioned are only 0.064% of America's total medical costs.

2. This is a 60% decline since the last such study (1993) despite millions of new firearms entering the market annually.

3. No one would attempt a cost-benefit analysis without considering benefits (here, lives saved by defensive uses). Estimates are that medical negligence kills about 180,000 Americans annually, after all, but this hardly proves that medicine is useless or doctors should be avoided, since presumably many times that number are saved.